More than 1.2 million ballots were cast in Harris County during 12 days of early voting, and hundreds of thousands more are expected to be cast on Election Day.
When results begin rolling in after polls close at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Harris County voters will have had the chance to weigh in on races from the presidential election at the top of the ballot all the way down to local constables’ races.
Most of the votes that will decide those local races already have been cast in Harris County, where officials expect the early vote could account for more than 70 percent of the total turnout.
Here’s what we know about who has, and hasn’t, voted so far.
Historical trend
Out of roughly 2.7 million registered voters in Harris County, 45 percent have cast their ballots for this year’s general election by early in-person voting or submitting a ballot by mail.
That is one of the highest early voting turnouts in a presidential election in decades, and while it still fell short of the 2020 presidential election, it continued a decades-long trend of increased early voting.
Nancy Sims, a political analyst at the University of Houston, said 2020 should be thought of as an outlier election because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In 2020, we had so many options for voting, and it increased the turnout,” Sims said. “The whole country was tuned in, it was during the pandemic, it was just a different kind of election.”
The 2020 election cycle also had an additional week of early voting to accommodate for the pandemic.
Day-by-day vote
While some ballots were mailed in as early as September, the bulk of early votes were cast in the two weeks that began Oct. 21 and ended Nov. 1. Both the start and end days saw the largest number of people vote with more than 126,000 cast ballots each day.
That continued a historical trend of the first and last days of early voting being the busiest, with a dropoff during the days in between, Sims said.
Voter ages
Harris County’s youngest registered voters were the least likely to cast a ballot during early voting, and its older voters were the most likely.
That’s not a surprise, said Michael Adams, a professor of public affairs at Texas Southern University.
“Younger voters are generally less reliable than older ones,” Adams said.
More than half of the county’s registered voters over the age of 50 cast a ballot during in-person early voting. Those aged 50-64 saw a 65 percent turnout, and 61 percent of those aged 65 and older voted.
Of registered voters between the ages of 18 and 22, only 29 percent turned out to vote in-person. The remaining registered voters up to age 30 only saw a 30 percent vote.
There were about 5,900 early voters whose age couldn’t be identified in county voter records, but their share of total votes cast was less than 0.5 percent.
Voting by gender
More women voted early than men.
Sims said that difference is not unexpected, noting that women make up about 63 percent of the population of U.S. colleges, a divide that has widened in recent years. College-educated voters are more likely to vote, and the issue of abortion could be further increasing turnout among women, Sims said.
“Historically, women are not a monolithic vote, tending to vote more on socioeconomic issues than women’s issues. However, with the abortion issue on the ballot and Texas’ strict law, I think that could be a driver for women voters this year,” Sims said.
Of the 1.39 million registered voters who are female, more than 668,000, or 48 percent, cast an early in-person vote.
Of the 1.24 million registered male voters, more than 535,000, or 43 percent, cast an in-person early vote. There were nearly 31,200 early voters whose gender could not be found in the county voter rolls, but their votes only make up 2.5 percent of those cast.
Party breakdown
More registered voters affiliated with the Republican Party cast a ballot during early voting than those affiliated with the Democratic Party, but it’s difficult to draw many conclusions from that data.
Voters in Texas do not register their party membership or affiliations. And because Texas has an open primary system, voters can choose to participate in either party’s primary. The voter roster, however, does note if a voter cast a ballot in either party’s primary.
Turnout during party primaries is low statewide in Texas, and Harris County is no exception, Adams said. In March, with President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump seemingly coasting to the Democratic and Republican party conventions, respectively, there was little draw to the primary ballot for disengaged voters, Adams said.
The data shows that a vast majority of those who voted early did not participate in the March primary elections. Of the 1.17 million people who showed up to vote early in-person, 73 percent did not have a record of voting in the party primaries.
Due to partisan gerrymandering, the vast majority of Congressional, legislative and local general elections are not competitive and largely were decided during the low-turnout primaries, Adams said.
“There are still very important races, the presidential election, U.S. Senate and some of the judicial races could be interesting,” Adams said. “But a lot of it was already decided in March.”
About 14.8 percent of all in-person early ballots were cast by those who voted in this year’s Republican primary. About 12 percent were cast by those who voted in the Democratic primary.
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